A.I.R @ Station: Eleonore Linz

Lab 1: The Soft

Residency: 
18. June 2014 to 2. July 2014

AFRODITI PSARRA (Greece) - "Divergence"

Project Description
Divergence is inspired by sci-fi aesthetics and real physics and questions the way we perceive our surroundings. In particular, it deals with the question of how to create physicality in order to demonstrate and sense the invisible forces that surround us. For that reason, this project proposes the creation of a wearable Electromagnetic Field detector that provides the human body with the ability to feel and hear the electrically and magnetically charged particles that propagate around us in the form of waves. The wearable will consist of a soft-circuitry garment with an embedded LilyPad Arduino microcontroller that provides haptic and sonic feedback of the electromagnetic sources that surround us. The haptic feedback will be experienced in the form of vibration patterns and the sonic feedback in the form of tones that variate in pitch depending on the strength of the signal. The detection will take place through the creation of two embroidered coils that will be incorporated in sleeves of the garment and will serve as “antennas” for sensing EM fields. The vibration will be created by small vibration motors incorporated in the back and the sound will be transmitted through a pair of headphones that can be attached at the neck of the garment.

Artist Bio
Afroditi Psarra (Athens, 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate at Complutense University of Madrid in the field of Image, Technology and Design. Her work explores the boundaries between folk tradition and handicrafts, creative coding and sonic experimentation. Her artworks include a wide variety of media, from electronic embroideries and wearables to interactive installations and sound performances. She has presented her work in festivals like Amber in Istanbul, Piksel in Bergen, Transmediale and CTM in Berlin, Electropixel in Nantes and MakerFaire Rome between others. She is currently doing an internship at Disney Research in Zurich.
http://afroditipsarra.com

Post date Author

Divergence

 Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - 15:06 Afroditi Psarra

Lab 2: The Hard

Residency: 
1. August 2014 to 14. August 2014

 

CE QUIMERA (Argentinia/Spain)

 

"There is no body without F[R]ICTION" – Mutant body architecture with f(r)ictional sound elements
 

This performance aims to be an attempt to create a new subjective fiction of body. Building on earlier work carried out in the laboratory Quimera Rosa, around subjectivity and sexuality, where the body mutates by the incorporation of prosthesis. During this residence I want to experiment a kind of prosthetic reversal,
where the modification of bodily boundaries is not by a sum of prosthesis attached to the body but by contact with the environment. Basing on the spatial notion of architecture, I want to experiment forms of body modification in which the space is expanding and the body goes into friction with it. It's not just the flesh mixed with the plastic but the flesh mixed with the environment. The flesh becomes plastic. The flesh becomes space. Playing on the border between body/environment, reality/fiction, human/machine, lesh/plastic, touch/sound...

 

Work proposal:
For this residency, I propose to create a DIY electronic device that generates sound by body friction, device that I will name F[R]ICTION. This one will be built on a synthesizer. This IC has four gates that can be combined in many ways. To make that sound is modified by body contact, I would like to investigate what kind of sensors would work for this case: touch, light, bending, vibration... I am interested in generating a large area of contact with the body. The device will be based on open hardware and replicants technologies. The entire process of creation will be documented in a blog licensed CC-by-nc-sa.
I also propose to create the scenery/architecture where the device will be embedded, as well as other elements of the architecture. I will work mostly with recycled material, looking for different textures of contact, grip and support.

 

week 1:
- sound device making
- documentation

 

week 2:
- architecture elements making
- body sound experimentation fused with architecture
- video recording (later edition)
- documentation

 

Performance:
Body – Contractual Masturbations.  The friction body with the elements of the architecture.  It's about showing a modified body, recreated by the contact with the environment.
Stage - Architecture comprised of various organic and machinistic technologies that make contact-friction and generate sound.  Multiple sound objects with unidentifiable shapes that appear as sexual organs occupying the space and in contact with the body, blurring the boundaries between the two.
Sound - The sound architecture will be based on Noise, not as a musical genre but as a practice of experimentation and improvisation. The Noise as disruption of narrative linearity and sound normality parameters. The sound will create an chaotic imaginary touch-sound and de-identified from body and objects, it will be a liquid element in body architecture.
Projected video - Recordings closeups (similar to porn closeups) from body in friction with architectural objects.

 

Ce Quimera
Cecilia Puglia González. Argentina/Spain.
Degree in Social Anthropology / UBA (Argentina)
Stage, dance and art movement training applied to performance, contemporary dance, release, Butoh, body weather...

Ce Quimera (AR-ES). Multidisciplinary performer since 2008, after the release of Quimera Rosa Lab, I have been focusing my corporal and research work on post-identity gender politics. The last few years I have incorporated new tools to my performance and video-making works, such as noise and electronics.
I work on transdisciplinary performance based on the articulation between bodies and technologies. Aware by transfeminist and queers practices, I make bodies a platform for public intervention, breaking up limits between public and private. I understand sexuality as a technological and artistical creation and seek to experiment hybrid, flexible and changing identities able to blur frontiers betweeen natural/artificial, normal/abnormal, man/woman, hetero/homo, human/machine... The most of my work is developed in a collaborative way, and always under DIY/DIT technologies and free culture paradigm. My work have been presented in streets, art centres, universities, museums, squats and festivals. 
C.V. extended: http://quimerarosa.tumblr.com/bio
 
Homepage:

 

 

Post date Author

F[r]iction

 Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - 12:45 Ce Quimera

Lab 3: The Wet

Residency: 
20. August 2014 to 3. September 2014

 

ROBERTINA SEBJANIC - "Hydra reminiscence"

 

Residency Proposal:
For the residency, I plan to build a Hydra is biologically immortal freshwater animal. The first experiments hat explored the regenerative properties of Hydra took place 250 years ago. Nowadays, it is scientifically proven that the Hydra can be completely regenerated to 1/200 part of her body. This impressive fact inspires
further material exploration on the regeneration of Hydra’s pluripotent stem cells. As a member of Hackteria network (http://hackteria.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page), I will construct an Eleonore­specific DIY wet lab that includes items like DIY microscope, DIY biotech kit etc.

 

 

During the 14 days of residency, I will work on the following experimentation:

 

1. Record sound produced by Hydra
2. Study Hydra’s reaction to color ­  put them into mini aquariums with different colours for testing.
3. Make various experiments and observations with hydra for its reaction and  regeneration process.

 

Working towards a performance:
Featuring the research subject Hydra, the residency works towards creating an ambiental poetic immersive performance. The performance features sound transmitted live as generated by Hydra, mixed with the sound recordings, the archive of the time reminiscence, collected during the 14 days’ residency.
The DIY microscope pictures make up the visuals echoing the sound landscape.

 

Context and inspiration:
The human life expectancy almost doubled during the last century while we attempt to solve the limitations of our bodies with the regenerative medicine whose research is lately focused on biologically immortal animals. We study their cells and proteins with the hope to acquire their properties via “biotech download” in our cells. Much effort has been spent trying to prolong life itself, it is important to understand the quality of an extended life. Aging research is not only about lifespan, but also the mental and physical changes that accompany the aging process (for now 1⁄3 of the old people are suffering from Alzheimers diseases). The
dream of living forever is only possible in legends ­ and even then the never­ending life is not without its drawbacks, after all ­  Tithonus had to live his eternal life as an old man because he forgot to ask for eternal youth.

 

Biological life forms are inseparable from their restrictions which we have not yet managed to fully understand either by medical interventions or engineering innovation. The immortal life of certain species has generated interest in the field of science as well in humanistic research. Until now these organisms have been proved to be immortal ­  Hydra, Turritopsis nutricula ­ Jellyfish, Tardigrades, Lobsters, Planarian flatworms and Bacteria. During the stay at Eleonore, I will focus my research on Hydra (a freshwater polyp), often attach themselves to vegetation by the base of the tubular body or column, with their tentacles suspended free in the water.

 

Robertina Šebjanič
based in Ljubljana, is an artist and cultural facilitator. In her art practice she is interested working in the field of humanist and natural science in the context of Living systems , AV performances and installations. The context for her ideas and concepts is often realized in collaboration with other authors, and thus through interdisciplinary and informal integration embodies in her work. She is member of BioTehnaLab, HacteriaLab and Theremidi orchestra. Between 2008 and 2012 she was a programme manager at Ljudmila, between 2013 till July 2014 she was working as mission and programme developer at KSEVT - Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies.
http://wiki.ljudmila.org/Uporabnik:Robertina
 

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Hydra reminiscence

Saturday, August 30, 2014 - 20:45 Robertina Sebjanic

Workshop: DIY Hydrophone

 Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 20:52 Robertina Sebjanic